States Move to Provide High-Risk Care Due to Obamacare Glitches

States are moving to provide health coverage solutions to high-risk individuals — those who incur about $11,000 annually in medical claims — who might otherwise lose coverage around Dec. 31 because of problems connected to the federal HealthCare.gov website, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Thirty-five states operate high-risk pools for roughly 200,000 patients rejected by commercial health-insurance companies because of their medical conditions.

Some of these pools had been set to close under the Affordable Care Act as high-risk patients were to register for insurance under the law.

The federal government administers a separate program for approximately 100,000 high-risk people across the country. It, too, may be continued until the kinks in Obamacare can be worked out, according to the Journal.

Problems with Obamacare have further complicated efforts by insurance actuaries to calculate new rates for various categories of clients. The uncertainty could push premium costs higher for just about all individual insurance clients, the Journal reported.

Speaking about the uncertainty over when the high-risk pools would be phased out , David Axene, a fellow of the Society of Actuaries said, "Any delay is going to add more risk to the overall process of guessing what the rates are going to be."